Abbott government illegal in telling Clean Energy Finance Corporation to cease operations
Clean Energy Finance Corporation could sue over Coalition shutdown It is not lawful for the new government to tell the CEFC to cease operations, says leading barrister Lenore Taylor, political editor theguardian.com, Thursday 19 September 2013
The board of the clean energy finance corporation is legally obliged to ignore a directive from the new treasurer, Joe Hockey, to cease its operation and could take the Coalition government to court if it persisted in attempts to shut the CEFC down before the parliament voted to abolish it, according to advice from a leading barrister. Continue reading
Abbott scraps Climate Commission, puts the vacuous Greg Hunt in charge!
Heaven help Australia – no Climate Change Department, and Greg Hunt of all people, in charge of climate matters!
Tim Flannery sacked, Climate Commission dismantled by Coalition by: Gemma Jones Political Reporter From: News Limited Network September 19, 2013 PROFESSOR Tim Flannery has been sacked by the Abbott Government from his $180,000 a year part time Chief Climate Commissioner position with the agency he runs to be dismantled immediately.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt called Prof Flannery this morning to tell him a letter formally ending his employment was in the mail.
In the letter, Mr Hunt tells Prof Flannery: “The Climate Commission does not have an ongoing role, and consequently I am writing to advise you that the Climate Commission has been dissolved, with effect from the date of this letter…… All other climate commissioners will also be sacked with the move to save more than $500,000 this financial year and $1.2 million next financial year.
The Coalition will now take advice on climate change from the Department of the Environment. – [Greg Hunt as Minister]
Tony Abbott’s real reasons for abolishing carbon price – and for his Direct Action sham
Secondly, powerful vested interests in Australia, including the fossil fuel lobby, mining industry and carbon intensive corporations are heavy donors to Mr Abbott’s Liberal Party.
Why Tony Abbott wants to abolish the carbon price, The Guardian, by Alexander White Wednesday 18 September 2013
Why is abolishing the carbon price Tony Abbott’s ‘top legislative priority’? “……. in my view it’s clear that Mr Abbott wants to abolish the carbon tax primarily for two reasons.
Firstly, he is either not convinced of the urgency of the threat of climate change to Australia’s economy or society, or doesn’t believe in climate change at all. For example, one of Tony Abbott’s business advisors, former ABC chairman Maurice Newman, in an article in The Australian equated concern over climate change to a “global warming religion” and climate scientists as a “global warming priesthood”.
Mr Abbott himself famously said in an interview that climate change is “crap”, and his ministry and senior member of his political party are avowed climate change science deniers. This position was made clear in 2009 by Malcolm Turnbull after being dumped as leader: Continue reading
AUDIO: Molten nuclear fuel melting through floors of Fukushima reactor buildings
Nuclear Expert: We believe molten fuel already melted through floors of Fukushima reactor buildings, or is still in process of melting through (AUDIO) http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-believe-molten-fuel-already-melted-floors-fukushima-reactor-buildings-process-melting-audio
Title: THE DEEPENING CRISIS AT FUKUSHIMA
Source: Green Power and Wellness
Host: Harvey Wasserman
Date: Aug. 12, 2013
Harvey Wasserman, host: We don’t even know where these cores are, do we? That’s a really amazing situation.
Gordon Edwards, nuclear expert and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility: That’s correct. What’s happening is, how far these cores have penetrated through the floor of the reactor building, or not, is really unknown because the radiation levels are so intense, that not only can humans not go in there […] but even robots that they sent in there, the gamma radiation is so intense that it fries the electronic components after a few minutes. So the robots are of only very limited use for a short time.
The result is they just don’t know what the state is, but we believe that the molten core has melted through the bottom of the containment vessel, it’s onto the floor, and it’s probably either melted through the floor, or is in the process of melting through the floor… Units 1, 2, and 3. Now some of those units are perhaps in worse condition than others.
Nuclear lobby front man Paul Howes will bide his time to get into Parliament
Christina Macpherson What is this – Paul Howes posing as some sort of left-winger? Backed by the big mining corporations and the nuclear lobby, Paul Howes helped them to get rid of Kevin Rudd’s Super Profits Mining Tax, and indeed, to get rid of Kevin Rudd.
Paul Howes is a gung-ho advocate for Australia’s uranium/nuclear lobby – and he will make his move when he deems that he is sure to be elected
Union chief Paul Howes abandons bid for Senate vacancy, saying it would have got ugly PAUL CLEARY THE AUSTRALIAN SEPTEMBER 19, 2013
……….HIGH-profile union leader Paul Howes has decided not to stand for a possible Senate vacancy, saying he does not want to spark a brawl in the NSW branch of the Labor Party. “I don’t want to be a wrecker and I don’t want to divide,” Mr Howes, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union and so-called “faceless man”, told reporters in Sydney……..
As an ALP Right faction powerbroker, Mr Howes played a role in Julia Gillard’s overthrow of Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010 -…….
Mr Howes refused to rule out running for parliament in the future, including as a lower house candidate in the next federal election. He declared his support for Bill Shorten in the leadership contest for federal Labor. : http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/union-chief-paul-howes-abandons-bid-for-possible-senate-vacancy/story-fn59niix-1226722672466#sthash.A7cN4HdX.dpuf
David Suzuki warns on Australia’s fate if we ditch carbon pricing
mining magnates are manipulating the debate in Australia just like they are doing elsewhere. Like the tobacco industry before them, they have known for years that climate change is happening and that burning fossil fuels is at the heart of it. But to maximise their profits they have continued to sow misunderstanding and confusion, funding the sceptics to perpetrate the myth that global warming is junk science.
They should be ignored because there is no confusion in the scientific community about what’s happening to our planet and what the future holds unless we change the way we live.
Tony Abbott will doom future generations if he ditches carbon tax September 18, 2013 SMH, David Suzuki “………..Half the coral on the Great Barrier Reef has disappeared in the past 27 years and its size could halve again in the next decade with degradation of the environment and the increasing frequency of cyclones.
Bushfires in Australia are getting more severe and more frequent. I see in Sydney you have already had your first fires barely a week into spring. And what has your new government done in response? As soon as Mr Abbott won power, he promised to wind back Australia’s recent efforts to combat global warming.
His promise to scrap the carbon tax, a tax which had been a timid step in the right direction, to close down your green energy bank and to reduce the rebates for buying solar panels, all send a terrible signal to your entrepreneurs and to the community.
And all of it is being done in the name of saving the economy.
But for more than 20 years the insurance industry has been telling us we have all been paying more for changes in the climate. Why aren’t we listening to the insurers, the hardest business heads of all?
I would have thought Australia would be leading the world in developing a new economy because climate change is going to devastate Australia. Continue reading
Martin Ferguson applauds the Abbott government’s attack on renewable energy
Christina Macpherson Just as well I’m not a subscriber to the Fin Rev – so I wasn’t able to read this almost certainly nauseous article. Anyway, readers might have noticed that Australia’s former (Labor) Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, has gone very quiet in recent months.
In that job, Martin Ferguson functioned with determination as the Minister Against Renewable Energy. It was a hard job for him, seeing that he was in a government that supported renewable energy and action on climate change.
So now, at last, – Ferguson can come out in his true colours – as servant of the polluting industries, and happily supporting the Liberals in their servitude to the polluting industries. What’s next for Ferguson – a big job with BHP, or with the Australian Uranium Association, or with John 
White, working for Australia as international radioactive trash dump?
Ferguson backs lower renewable energy target Financial Review Former energy minister Martin Ferguson has backed an industry campaign to reduce the renewable energy target, an intervention which will strengthen the hand of critics of the scheme within the Coalition. (subscribers only)
18 SEP 2013 http://www.afr.com/p/national/ferguson_backs_lower_renewable_energy_KMQdzXIjg1aFFox2r6XIcJ
Abbott to shut down jobs as he shuts down Clean Energy Finance Corporation
Abbott axes clean energy jobs: Greens http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/18/abbott-axes-clean-energy-jobs-greens Prime minister-elect Tony Abbott’s “illegal” decision to axe the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will hit jobs and the environment, say the Greens. The Australian Greens say the coalition government’s plan to shut down the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) will wreck job opportunities in the renewable energy sector.
One of the first acts of the new Liberal National government after it is sworn in on Wednesday morning will be to direct the $10 billion CEFC to suspend loans for renewable energy projects.
Prior to the federal election, Senate clerk Rosemary Laing advised the coalition that legislation would be needed to close the so-called green bank and a minister who acted without that legislation could risk “serious legal consequences”.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said incoming prime minister Tony Abbott’s priorities are wrong.
“We know we have to transition to clean renewable energy and here we have Tony Abbott saying he wants to stop the renewable energy industry from being funded,” she told Sky News.
“That is not just breaking the law, it is bad for the environment and it’s going to trash jobs.”
No known solution to contain molten cores of Fukushima nuclear reactors
Today on Your Call: How concerned should we be about Fukushima? http://kalw.org/post/today-your-call-how-concerned-should-we-be-about-fukushima
NPR: How can Fukushima’s molten fuel be contained so it stops contaminating the planet? Nuclear Expert: There’s no way to get at molten fuel… I’ve not seen a solution to this (AUDIO) http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-melted-fukushima-fuel-solution-problem-audio
Title: How concerned should we be about Fukushima?
Host: Rose Aguilar
Date: Aug. 29, 2013
Kevin in Felton, California: Considering the fact that the containment buildings and vessels are breached, that the floors of the structures are breached — What methodology exists to actually re-establish containment of this burned fuel, so that they can then control the water leakage that’s contaminating the planet? How are they going to re-establish a seal around this burned fuel? […]
Arjun Makhijani, Nuclear expert and President of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research: To the caller’s question, the main problem of the molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor — that is going to much more intractable, because, as I said, the infrastructure on the site has been destroyed, and how they’re going to get at that molten fuel and actually extract it, at least I have not seen any reasonable solutions to this problem.
See also: UC Berkeley Nuclear Professor: Work to go on for thousands of years at Fukushima site if they can’t retrieve melted fuel (AUDIO)
South Australia’s renewable energy success, as its electricity prices fall
The Australian Energy Market Operator has predicted that the amount of rooftop solar could triple by 2020. Depending on how much wind energy is built between now and 2020 – and that will depend on whether the new government retains the current renewable energy target – the state’s renewable energy capacity is expected to soar well above 50 per cent by then.
South Australia’s perfect energy mix: Cleaner, greener, cheaper REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson on 18 September 2013 Not only has South Australia achieved the highest level of wind energy and rooftop solar in the country, and has cut its emissions by a third in the last few years, its consumers have also had a windfall in generation costs: they are paying generators much less for their electricity than they did before the boom in wind farm and household solar began in 2009.
A study by energy analyst firm Pitt & Sherry finds that in 2012/13, the average South Australian paid generators $88 a year less for the electricity he or she consumed than they did in 2009-10.
And that is even after the introduction of a carbon price. If the impact of the carbon price is taken out, the average price paid per capita to generators in South Australia has fallen by $188 over the last four years – during which time the wind industry has grown from virtually nothing to more than 1,200MW, and rooftop solar has done the same (it is now 400MW). Continue reading
Springer’s Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences finds renewable energy is USA’s cheapest option
Renewable energy now the cheapest option for Americans, study finds http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/renewable-energy-now-the-cheapest-option-for-americans–study-finds_100012772/#ixzz2fN7x8IOZ 18. SEPTEMBER 2013 BY: IAN CLOVER
Clean energy sources such as solar and wind are more cost-effective than coal-fired power plants when health and climate impacts are factored in, according to Springer’s Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Factor in the social, health and environmental costs caused by coal-fired power plants in the U.S. and clean energy is the cheaper option, according to a study published in Springer’s Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.
Based on official U.S. government estimates totting up the combined toll on health and the environment caused by the burning of fossil fuels, it is also cheaper to replace existing power plants with clean energy alternatives rather than keep the old plant running, added the study.
The journal further stated that America should not be reticent when it comes to replacing its coal-fired power with renewable power, stating that such a move would be cost-effective as well as environmentally friendly. Continue reading
Australia’s power utilities losing money because of falling electricity demand, not because of carbon pricing
lower demand and the impact of renewables is actually delivering cheaper electricity, even if it means that generators are suffering because of lower profits
South Australia’s perfect energy mix: Cleaner, greener, cheaper REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson on 18 September 2013 “……..Of the other states, Tasmania (because it is mostly hydro) had the lowest carbon impact of just $43 per capita, while Victoria had the highest courtesy of its brown coal generators, and Queensland and NSW, which both rely heavily on black coal generation, also had high impacts.
However, the impact of falling demand and renewables offset much of these price impacts. In Victoria, which takes a lot of the excess South Australian generation, and where the local energy efficiency program has also had a signficant impact (household consumption is down 10 per cent over the last year according to EnergyAustralia), the fall in wholesale prices represented $124 per capita. That means, even with a carbon price, average payments to generators rose only $55 over the four years. Continue reading
Clean Energy Finance Corporation – its demise will stall investment and jobs
CEFC put on notice by new government Sky News September 18, 2013 The Clean Energy Finance Corporation hopes it may have a role to play under an Abbott government despite the coalition taking steps to dismantle the ‘green bank’ on its first day in office.
The coalition has set about implementing its promise to wind back the government-owned body tasked with investing in clean energy.Treasurer Joe Hockey has written to the CEFC requesting the cooperation of its board in suspending all further investments.
The Australian Greens slammed the move as illegal, claiming the coalition could not instruct the $10 billion CEFC to act against its legislated mandate.
The corporation has agreed not to approve any new investments but will continue meeting its existing legal and contractual obligations……. Australian Greens senator Richard Di Natale said the CEFC had been legislated to invest its funds and telling them to do otherwise without new laws in place showed a ‘complete disregard for the parliament’.
‘The fact that Tony Abbott believes he can instruct an independent statutory body to act against its legislated mandate … shows arrogance and hubris,’ Senator Di Natale said in a statement.
The CEFC was set up under the Gillard government’s carbon price package, and assigned $10 billion over five years to support renewable energy projects through loans, guarantees and equity investments. The corporation said it had invested $500 million on projects worth $2 billion, meaning it had generated four times its own outlay, and had no adverse impact on government net debt.
Some advocates of clean energy have expressed concerns that investment and jobs in the sector will stall without the certainty of funds provided the CEFC……..http://www.skynews.com.au/politics/article.aspx?id=907335
Queensland’s Newman government to open up Cape York wilderness to mining
Blueprint splits Cape Liam Parsons Thursday, September 19, 2013 The Cairns Post HUGE sections of Cape York will be opened up to mining and farming under the Newman Government’s draft Cape York Regional Plan.
Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney was in Cairns yesterday to unveil the plan which will replace the former Labor government’s Wild Rivers laws……. Wilderness Society Northern Australia campaigner Gavan McFadzean described the draft plan as the Newman Government’s blueprint to industrialise Cape York. “This Government wants to open up the most sensitive waterways and landscapes to mining, dams and land clearing,” he said.
Mr McFadzean said the plan snubbed the region’s world heritage values and “rides roughshod over the aspirations of the traditional owners of Cape York.” http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2013/09/19/248318_local-news.html
Pacific Hydro will go it alone, believing in its Portland Wind Project.
Clean energy providers bypassing the big power retailers CRIKEY, TRISTAN EDIS | SEP 17, 2013 Pacific Hydro’s wind farm will be financed without a big power retailer involved. Is this the future or just a last hurrah for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? Pacific Hydro announced last week it will construct the 47 megawatts final stage of the Portland Wind Project. The size of the wind farm is nothing exceptional, but the way it is commercially structured is: this wind farm is one of very few constructed without a major energy retailer involved either as the owner, or as a 10-year-plus purchaser of the output.
Generally wind farms are developed with energy retailers involved. That’s because they substantially reduce the risk of the project by providing a fixed price for output, bypassing wholesale electricity and renewable energy certificate markets which can be extremely volatile………
Pacific Hydro has decided to take a punt that market fundamentals will eventually prevail. It’s worth noting they’ve done this with $70 million in finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The CEFC’s mandate includes adopting the presumption that politicians don’t fiddle with the law of the land.
Will other financiers be quite so brave now the CEFC has been ordered to shut down? http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/09/17/clean-energy-providers-bypassing-the-big-power-retailers/?wpmp_switcher=mobile
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 